Full of Grace
by IsleofSolitude
Summary: Pre-series. Fiona character exploration, from her teen years to the pilot episode.


This began as a way to talk through the acting choices of romance during season 1 and 2, where Michael seemed inordinately awkward during his romantic moments with Fi. As stories tend to do, it developed it's own narrative and expanded into exploring Fiona's life.

Disclaimer: I own nothing related to Burn Notice

* * *

 **Full of Grace**

There are different forms of grace.

Fiona Glennane at age fourteen swore she had none. Slight of frame, her tongue was almost as sharp as her elbows, and she knew how to wound with both. She could be steady, as demonstrated with the fact that she could sharpshoot with the best of her older brothers and carefully handle explosives in ways they didn't dare. She knew how much pressure to apply to a groin or neck to incapacitate an opponent, something she had many chances to experiment with. Fiona had agility, control, precision, and charm.

Grace, not so much.

Her sister Claire was the graceful one. There was something about the youngest Glenanne's walk and talk that brought to mind peace and tranquility. She was steady and pleasant in a way that Fiona could never emulate, even had she wanted.

When her beauty of a sister was gunned down, Fiona never thought about grace again, preferring the vengeance and fury that dwelled in her heart to the gentle smile of her sister that she'd never see again.

* * *

But then she met Michael McBride, and the damn word popped up again. Most men would balk against being described as graceful, but he was. It wasn't just the way he controlled any situation, or the way his eyes pierced through the wall she carried around herself. It wasn't even the way his fingers caressed the bullets as he loaded them as he hotwired a car.

They met in a pub, and while she didn't pay him any mind at all, it didn't take a genius to see he was watching her. She let him, ignoring him except for a few glances between her bangs, until he came to ask her to dance. By his posture and the tilt of his head, she had assumed he was like her brothers, like most men she met in this pub: arrogant, devilish, good for a few fun times and then it was time to move on. Shoving a gun in his belly was the best way to scare him off, but he had surprised her with a cheeky smile—and she was amused by how well he combined sincerity and sarcasm with his retort. She allowed him to holster her weapon, and then his fingers slid into hers…

For all her rage, Fiona had a romantic side and was unashamed of her thoughts that it was like the sun appeared from behind the clouds—not that she'd ever admit it. But even with the sunshine, and the way her breathe hitched as they moved closer, she was hyper aware of the way his hands held hers just a little too tight, the way they had to move just a little too much to find a comfortable hold.

* * *

"Don't be afraid to be alone," the elderly Colleen Glenanne would intone from her rocking chair, "It's better to be alone than to feel alone." As a child, Fiona had often wondered what her grandmother had meant, but she found out long before she lost her sister—her roommate. And that was when she realized that when she was alone, she felt alone.

So she tried not to be alone. Her brothers rarely lacked for chaos, she had aunts and uncles and cousins and relatives for miles. As fiery and fierce as she was, Fi could find friends easily—and if she couldn't, she could at least find people who were scared to tell her no when she asked for their company. And as she got older, had no lack of offers to keep her nights from being lonely.

At first, that was what she thought McBride would be: a fun, shiny new distraction between robbing banks and dealing with her family. But then somewhere between the flirting and the explosions, she had invited him to her little loft apartment, and things had changed.

 _Their first kiss had been lit with the glow of an explosion, and just as hot and wild. Nothing like this, this hesitant, awkward little touch of lips. McBride's breathing was heavy, and the way his arms wrapped around her was weird, her ear digging into the crook of his elbow, the angle of his hand coming down to her waist—but her heart beat up and she swore she could hear the blood streaming through her veins as they paused—and then he lowered his head to hers again and she couldn't feel anything but pleasure._

* * *

She had been with other men, but being with Michael- McBride, Westen, it made no difference—was so different. Fi craved violence, craved adrenaline and pain and noise and chaos—anything to keep that small deep part of her that wept from being noticed. But with Michael, there was all of that, but so much more. There was hair being caught under their bodies and bumped noises, there was unintentional kneeing and head butts caused by early morning fatigue, and his shoulder falling asleep because she had curled on top of him and he refused to move, and her being beyond moved by it even as she worked a kink in her neck out. There was a the ability to wake up in the middle of the night and not have to do a perimeter check because he _had her back_ , and there was the sense of sheer safety that she had never felt before in her memory.

And there was so much laughter.

Then he left in the middle of the night and took everything he had brought to her life.

* * *

She should have been relieved, that he left and spared her the fallout: A loyal Irish lady dating an American spy, even after she found out who he was?

She'd had wound up dead.

Fiona felt like she was dead anyways, so what was the difference?

* * *

Armand was sophisticated and polished, and held himself in a way that most people envied. But Fi found herself both attracted and repulsed by the sheer unnatural way every move was perfected and refined. It was creepy.

It was what she craved.

Her life had imploded, her enemies were after her, and she had a secret that could change everything—a secret she didn't even know why she bothered keeping because Michael was a coward.

Control, power, freedom—Armand made it look so tempting, so glamorous, and so different from the chaos she had survived.

He kissed her in a way that made her feel underwater: everything else dimmed, her mind floated somewhere between fuzzy peace and alarm, and she felt like the sun was so very far away.

It was the first time in her life that she learned how violence could be distant, how it didn't need to be right around her in order to be deadly. She learned that danger isn't always being in the thick of things, how intimidation and violence is sometimes elegance and detachment.

She learned that restraint didn't mean a good person, it just meant someone who could be deadly without getting the blood on their hands.

Fiona learned something that running from the law, that knowing her steady hands were the only thing keeping herself from blowing up as she dealt with chemicals, that dodging bullets and knives and the next disaster never taught her: fear. A cold, creeping fear that stayed in her bones for years even after she left him.

* * *

The next time she heard from Michael, his voice was strained, hesitant, and awkwardness dripped between every sentence.

"Don't hang up!"

And somehow she didn't. She let him explain, even as she hovered a finger over the end call button, even as his words brought her no more information than she had guessed or scrounged up, even as his voice faltered more times than she could count, she listened.

And then at the end, after a silence that stretched longer than possible, he said her name for the first time in years.

"….Fiona…"

She hung up rather than deal with the tears that finally started to appear in her eyes, the way her heart clenched.

Only minutes later she texted back with her private number, the number that only her family had for emergencies, that never changed.

* * *

They met up the next day.

She had braced herself for anything, but the sight of him tore at all her composure.

It didn't help that he had a nasty shiner, courtesy of whatever job he was in the middle of. Fiona made the mistake (was it though?) of touching it, of reaching through the years and the distance they shielded themselves on, and Michael's steady breathing turned shallow and his words tripped over themselves, like his feet stumbled because he wasn't able to reach out for her fast enough, teeth clashing and arms fumbling as they met in the middle.

Fiona wasn't sure who held on tighter that night, but she knew that Michael was the one to leave, slipping from the bed while she was asleep.

* * *

Though she wasn't proud of the arrangement, and Michael would never admit to having an arrangement, over the next few years they saw each other sporadically, meeting up if they happened to be on the same continent in the same country at the same time.

Each time it was just a dinner (if they had time) or a need for tactical support (which sometimes was combined with dinner) and then sometimes it was a kiss in a back alley or, if Fiona was really lucky, more than a kiss in a hotel room or cheap apartment.

Each time started off with them orbiting around each other, until eventually they would gravitate closer and closer, until they collided.

* * *

This time, though, Fiona didn't stick to the script.

They were tangled together, lazing in the afterglow, when she traced his jaw. Michael sleepily smiled, relaxed even more, and she couldn't help it.

"I still love you."

There had been no split second of seeing him react, one moment he was fully with her, the next he had pulled away (mostly mentally but easily physically seconds later), but she waited, hoping he would prove her wrong.

He didn't. Running one hand through his hair, he stared at her.

"Fi…I thought…" She could feel everything in his pause, feel the scratchy sheets and the warmth dissipating where he lay, feel the seconds slip by as he struggled.

"Fiona, I don't do relationships."

She felt everything, but she remembered nothing but rage. She has vague images of screaming at him, words like user and fool and bastard rolling in the worst combinations off her tongue. She has the impression of the way his muscles moved as he tried to avoid her limbs and gather his close.

She doesn't remember giving him a scar, only the fear in his eyes as she snarls "Lose my number."

(Whether that pain is from her words or the blood she refuses to think about. It's too much like hope if she says both.)

* * *

The days turn into weeks into months into years and Fiona has lived passionately and wildly through them, tempering herself with compassion and whatever her own brand of morality is (It's a work in progress).

She feels numb when left alone, so she makes sure she isn't alone. She makes friends and lovers and enemies throughout the world, finally settling in New York, New York. It's lovely, and matches her turmoil, though she doesn't let herself think on it except lonely nights in her penthouse, the wind howling through gray skies.

* * *

It is two in the morning and she answers the phone, grogginess never leaking through her voice.

"May I speak to Fiona Glenanne?"

"Who's asking?"

"This is Mercy Hospital. We understand that you are the emergency contact of Michael Westen?"

Fiona sits up, heart pounding. "What's wrong with Michael?" The lady goes over a list of conditions, none of which sound life threatening but that all together paint a very sad story that Fiona can't help being affected by.

"Okay. I'm not local, I'll be there as soon as I can." They exchange more information, and then Fiona is grabbing her emergency bag and on the phone making arrangements.

* * *

There are different forms of grace.

Fiona at age thirty-four knew that she had been allowed her own version of it. She could wound someone in more ways than she could count, and she owned her failures and her successes, knew her body and her mind and her heart as much as she knew her way around guns or bombs or tactical analysis.

She wasn't sure if grace applied to Michael, not as he was, passed out in the hotel bed, and she wasn't sure which definition fit her, impatient in the chair, but she couldn't wait to find out, to finally have a chance to have him grace her life again, awkward sunlight, smiles and powerful body, graceful and painful and finally, finally there with her.

Full of grace.

* * *

Drawing back her leg, she kicked him.


End file.
